Review by Carl on September 17, 2024.

That band name felt familiar the first time I encountered these nutcases, and soon enough it came to me: Carnivore "S.M.D.", from their second album "Retaliation". "You call my music sonic poison! Turn it down, it's annoying!!" Well, I'm not gonna turn this down, because this is far from annoying.

This is fucking AWESOME!! Where has this band been all my life? I can't remember hearing an act that so well encapsulates everything that grinding death metal should be. It's raw, abrasive and it's brought with conviction and bucketloads of conviction and sadistic intent, so what more do you want?

There is one name that came to me at once, and that is of Repulsion. The short, manic chainsaw riffs, with battering blast beats and raw, hoarse growls spewing forth their message, it all fits like a pathologist's glove. The glove that he's gonna shove up your dead rectum, that is. On top of this putrid smegma cake of grinding power, there's also the screaming Slayer-ish leads that are not so much performed, they are more catapulted into your face with reckless abandon. A nice touch is the dual vocals that remind me of Extreme Noise Terror and especially old Gorerotted. When the band shifts back a gear occasionally, the spirit of Autopsy at their prime comes drifting up, but the band just as easily employs primitive Slayer riffs to inject proceedings with some variety. It goes without saying that this whole intense package of grinding death metal is delivered with a manic crust punk energy, lending the music on offer a near-psychotic sense of lunatic power. Like a chainsaw that goes through your spine, this is going to cause some severe trauma, this stuff.

The production follows suit with the belligerent music on offer. Perhaps not perfection by basic standards, but simply perfect for a band like Sonic Poison. As raw and deranged sounding as the music itself, it establishes without any problem the right atmosphere for this short album to reach its fullest potential. The percussion has a totally natural sound to it, making this platter sound old school as fuck, while the vocals and guitar are good up front in the music, unleashing frenetic energy all throughout the proceedings. As a whole, the music is harsh, powerful, and aggressive, and I cannot think of any other way this should've sounded other than this. It might not be perfect for the more picky listener, but goddamn, this does it for me so hard!

This is a raw and volatile death/grind album the way it should be made more often. It takes you back to those days when Napalm Death, Repulsion, Agathocles, and Unseen Terror unleashed their earliest material upon a non-suspecting world. It's the perfect antidote for a lot of the more trendy and pretentious crap that is flooding the underground these days, and if I have to aim some point of critique at this album, it is that it's too damn short!

Get this one, if you haven't already. It's just this friggin' good.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10